Building PC for General Gaming

[boey]

Budget (including currency): $1500 SGD (~$1070 USD)

Country: Singapore

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Everything from AAA like RDR2 to e-sports like CS:GO

Other details: Playing at 1080p 165hz

 

CPU                 Ryzen 5 5500
Motherboard    Gigabyte B550M DS3H AC Wifi      $370
RAM                Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 16    $99
GPU                Gigabyte RTX 3060Ti Eagle OC     $715
PSU                 Corsair RM650                               $148
SSD                 1TB Crucial MX500                        $135
HDD                2TB Seagate Barracuda                 $77
Case               Tecware Nexus Air M2 TG              $43

                                         TOTAL                           $1,587 (in SGD)

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/VQ8pDq

 

 

Any suggestions/things to take note?
Haven't kept up with PC parts for a while, chose AMD because it's much cheaper than Intel here

[Fasauceome]

8 minutes ago, boey said:

CPU                 Ryzen 5 5500

Is a used Ryzen 5 3600 an option? It has very similar performance to a 5500 in gaming, and often can save some money.

[Sjaakie]

Looks good, well balanced. Don't use Corsair RAM for AMD though, it's notorious for incompatibility. Also it's 32GB i assume your going for?

 

NMMe drive would be preffered if it doesn't matter price-wise. The MX500 is an older model.

 

Never heard of that case brand but it seems decent enough.

[boey]

17 hours ago, Fasauceome said:

Is a used Ryzen 5 3600 an option? It has very similar performance to a 5500 in gaming, and often can save some money.

Nah, building for a friend and he prefers brand new. Would a 5600 be better price-wise? I think it's about 25-30USD more expensive

 

17 hours ago, Sjaakie said:

Looks good, well balanced. Don't use Corsair RAM for AMD though, it's notorious for incompatibility. Also it's 32GB i assume your going for?

 

NMMe drive would be preffered if it doesn't matter price-wise. The MX500 is an older model.

 

Never heard of that case brand but it seems decent enough.

The case brand is pretty famous in this region for good-quality knockoffs, and they're really cheap

 

Was thinking of changing it to an NVME drive too, the case might not have enough space for the drives, since I might be adding in previously used drives

 

Any recommendations for a better SATA/NVME SSD?

[Queen Chrysalis]

1 hour ago, boey said:

Nah, building for a friend and he prefers brand new. Would a 5600 be better price-wise? I think it's about 25-30USD more expensive

Just about worth it.  Take it or leave, can't really go wrong either way.  I'd say worth it.

1 hour ago, boey said:

Was thinking of changing it to an NVME drive too, the case might not have enough space for the drives, since I might be adding in previously used drives

 

Any recommendations for a better SATA/NVME SSD?

MP33 Pro is usually the best value Gen 3 with a DRAM cache.

 

https://sg.pcpartpicker.com/product/PDtKHx/team-mp33-pro-512-gb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-tm8fpd512g0c101

 

I assume you're shopping on the Singaporean market.

18 hours ago, Sjaakie said:

Don't use Corsair RAM for AMD though, it's notorious for incompatibility.  Also it's 32GB i assume your going for?

Gaming isn't gonna benefit from 32GB.  More than half of it will sit idle.  Also, I've never had an issue with it.  Corsair doesn't make the memory, only micron, hynix, and samsung do.  Their modules are Ryzen certified.

[Sjaakie]

2 hours ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

 

Gaming isn't gonna benefit from 32GB.  More than half of it will sit idle.  Also, I've never had an issue with it.  Corsair doesn't make the memory, only micron, hynix, and samsung do.  Their modules are Ryzen certified.

If you get the specific Ryzen Certified modules then yes. But most of them are not. It doesn't have to be an issue for everyone but it's been a problem for some time.

 

16 GB is fine for just gaming but if you're running ram-intensive games and have run some programs in the background I would recommend getting 32 with current price (at least where I'm from it's pretty cheap atm).

 

4 hours ago, boey said:

The case brand is pretty famous in this region for good-quality knockoffs, and they're really cheap

 

Was thinking of changing it to an NVME drive too, the case might not have enough space for the drives, since I might be adding in previously used drives

 

Any recommendations for a better SATA/NVME SSD?

Looking at the images it does look like a pretty decent case indeed.

 

Exact NVMe doesn't matter too much, Samsung 980 / 970 plus is a decent choice, but getting a cheaper one is no problem. Getting a TLC instead of a QLC drive would be preferred though.

[Queen Chrysalis]

5 hours ago, Sjaakie said:

16 GB is fine for just gaming but if you're running ram-intensive games and have run some programs in the background I would recommend getting 32 with current price (at least where I'm from it's pretty cheap atm).

Even in the US $50 matters for almost every budget, and singapore it's like $100 for an extra 16GB.  Also, I've still yet to see a game use more than 10, and windows really only uses like 3.  People are see later builds of win10 and win11 sprawling out over unused RAM at idle thinking that now windows needs more RAM.  In-game, I've only ever seen total util over 16GB when someone had 32 installed, because windows was still caching stuff in the background.  But as far as latency or framerate, there's till no difference between having 16 or 32.  Even with a bunch of tabs open behind the game or something like that.  So for a budget where $100 matter for a framerate-determining component like a GPU, you'd be nuts to go with 32GB of RAM just for the heck of it.

 

EDIT:  Just checked util, and chrome seems to have become way less of a RAM hog over the years, too.  I'm at 1.5GB used for like 8 tabs open.

[Guest]

9 hours ago, boey said:

 Would a 5600 be better price-wise? I think it's about 25-30USD more expensive

Yes it would. The R5 5500 is pretty terrible.

[boey]

57 minutes ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

Even in the US $50 matters for almost every budget, and singapore it's like $100 for an extra 16GB.  Also, I've still yet to see a game use more than 10, and windows really only uses like 3.  People are see later builds of win10 and win11 sprawling out over unused RAM at idle thinking that now windows needs more RAM.  In-game, I've only ever seen total util over 16GB when someone had 32 installed, because windows was still caching stuff in the background.  But as far as latency or framerate, there's till no difference between having 16 or 32.  Even with a bunch of tabs open behind the game or something like that.  So for a budget where $100 matter for a framerate-determining component like a GPU, you'd be nuts to go with 32GB of RAM just for the heck of it.

 

EDIT:  Just checked util, and chrome seems to have become way less of a RAM hog over the years, too.  I'm at 1.5GB used for like 8 tabs open.

6 hours ago, Sjaakie said:

16 GB is fine for just gaming but if you're running ram-intensive games and have run some programs in the background I would recommend getting 32 with current price (at least where I'm from it's pretty cheap atm).

 The plan is to get 16 right now, and upgrade to 32 later if needed

[boey]

9 hours ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

MP33 Pro is usually the best value Gen 3 with a DRAM cache.

I'm buying from a brick and mortar store, as those are cheaper here (plus no delivery time)

 

These are the choices I have for an SSD

 

AFAIK, Sandisk, Crucial BX500 and Lexar SSDs are DRAM-less

 

I usually go for WD Blue(although they're usually out of stock), or Crucial MX500

 

Any suggestions from something here? Anything Samsung is out of the question, way too expensive

[Queen Chrysalis]

DRAM is not a big deal for gaming.  Just get whatever is cheapest if I'm being honest, they're all SSDs so windows and games are gonna be fast.  

[boey]

9 hours ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

Just about worth it.  Take it or leave, can't really go wrong either way.  I'd say worth it.

Is this video legit? The FPS differences seem massive, especially since my friend is gaming on 1080p

I can upgrade it to a 5600 for 39SGD/28USD. Feel like it's worth it imo

 

[Queen Chrysalis]

Just now, boey said:

Is this video legit? The FPS differences seem massive, especially since my friend is gaming on 1080p

 

 

At 1080p you're gonna see the biggest difference because the bottleneck is on the CPU.  At a higher resolution, it would probably be about the same.  IMO no one should be buying new PCs for 1080p.  The 5600 is better no doubt, but I think they're both priced appropriately.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, boey said:

Is this video legit? The FPS differences seem massive, especially since my friend is gaming on 1080p

I can upgrade it to a 5600 for 39SGD/28USD. Feel like it's worth it imo